A Little Bit of Everything....

Our day started in much the same way, with the six of us heading to different sites. After getting back from the hospital last night, Tim asked if there was anyone with medical knowledge who could go with him to the hospital to talk to Moises' doctor's and social workers to learn more about his condition. Jerry, Scot, and Jennifer all volunteered, so they spent the morning at the hospital. The reason Moises needs to be transported to the United States is because he needs an operation to reattach his liver to his intestines, and to repair the perforations in his intestines (not to mention the fact that he is missing an entire meter of his bowel). The biggest reason we need to get him to the States is because he is receiving NO nutrition right now, and there is neither the funding nor the medical personnel to do that. We are still searching for ways to get Moises to the States as soon as possible.

Stacy started her day at Stella Mae's, a school for special needs children.

Sophie and Michelle started their day at the burial grounds lifting cinder blocks to continue forming the base of the new classrooms, moving scrap wood, and playing with kids.

We then all gathered at the burial grounds for another homemade (delicious) lunch.

Jerry made a new friend at lunch, Jocelle. After lunch we realized that most of us had one thing in common, our legs were either sun burnt or scraped for one reason or another - all part of a hard days work (and obviously not applying sunscreen evenly - but we're working on getting better at that). After lunch, Scot, Jerry, and Stacy took a turn laying cinder blocks and spreading mortar in between the blocks.

Sophie, Jennifer, and Michelle headed out to a local children's home to distribute fish (the fish that Scot and Jerry caught yesterday).

We spent quite a bit of time at the children's home after dropping off the fish, and in many ways it was a very frustrating experience. There are several children's homes in Belize that are very well run, but this one is government run, very corrupt, and the children live in terrible conditions. We don't have time tonight to get into all the details, but in the picture you can see two buildings. Those two buildings make up the entire facility where the 55 kids eat, sleep, play, and study. It was crowded, poorly maintained, and the workers were apathetic towards the kids. Some of the kids clung to us and didn't want to see us go while others were terrified of people because they had such little contact with adults.

One of the local boys, a kid nicknamed Pops has become an apprentice to Kenny and was helping out at our work site today. Scot got to know him fairly well throughout the day and learned a lot about him and his family. The picture above is of Pops, and the picture below is of the house where he lives with his family. We're not sure how many of his brothers and sisters are still living at home, but we do know that he has 6 brothers and 5 sisters (so even if a few are gone, that's still quite a bit of people living in a small space!). Pops was a very hard worker and a great person to have on the work site.

At the end of the day we all pretty worn out and tired and ready for showers, but then....someone brought out the soccer ball and a game started. Somehow it became girls vs. guys, but the only girls playing were Sophie and Michelle, and there were a few guys from Lubbock and a few neighborhood boys (a total of six guys in all) playing, so it wasn't really a fair game - but we had a TON of fun! It was a great way to end a hard day of work.

A Good Day of Work and a Prayer Request

We split up this morning after breakfast to head to separate work sites for the day. We all had wonderful days, but we were so excited to get back together at dinner time and hear about one another's days, you would have thought we hadn't seen each other in weeks!

Scot and Jerry headed out to fish! That's right, fish! Originally this fish pond was built for the sole purpose of feeding the kids at one children's home. However, it has been so successful that they were not able to feed just the kids from that home but pretty much all the oprhanages in the area around Belize City. Every 5-7 months they will harvest the fish, and today just happened to be one of those days. After the collected the fish they cleaned and gutted over 10,000 fish. Today they fished, tomorrow, we will deliver the fish. Here are just a few pictures of the fishing process (we have video to share when we get back).

The rest of us headed to the burial grounds. To set the stage of where we were this is the school:

and these are a few of the students on the way to school.

Jennifer began the today by heading on a field trip with the preschool students (right by the church is a school, funded by the church). This is Jennifer with one of the students.

Stacy began her day by pulling nails out pieces of wood. The goal is to have 3 more classes built by September, but the only thing in place now is the concrete slab. Stacy helped clean up the wood that was on top so that the building can begin.

Jennifer later joined in the nail pulling efforts.

Michelle and Sophie spent their day water proofing the outreach center next to the school. They began by painting the porch level and the railings,


and would take breaks when the kids had breaks from school to play with them.

After a DELICIOUS homemade burrito lunch Sophie and Michelle moved on to the back walls,

and got reinforcements.



We made a great team. At the end of the day only one wall needs to be finished.

Also going on inside the outreach center was a dental clinic (which we could see through the windows as we were painting)

This is a view of the church and outreach center from down the street.

A fun video from our playground time:

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And one very serious prayer request from the day:

During dinner, it was brought to our attention that a seven year old boy was in accident on Jan 8. Since then he has had 5 surgeries, and every single doctor is shocked that he is still alive. The doctors have asked if we can help get him to the States, it is only chance of survival. Sophie went to the hospital with a few others to pray with him tonight and reported back that he no longer has any small bowel, and the majority of his internal organs are exposed. He is nothing but skin and bones. His name is Moses, and he has committed his life to the Lord if he survives. Please pray for him. We need a way to airlift him to the States, a doctor, and a way for him to be cared for after surgery. It is no coincidence that his is happening while we are here, a team of more than 30 people with resources and connections. Thank you for your prayers.

A Lesson in Belize Time-ish

We were told the one thing we needed to keep in mind while we are here in Belize is FLEXIBILITY! To say that church starts at 6:00 really means 6:30-7:00ish (church as you will see by the sign church is supposed to start at 6:00pm). This is called Belize Time...

Matt, the associate pastor of the Lubbock group, told us that we didn't need to leave here until at least 6:15. When we pulled up in front of the church, the pastor hadn't even arrived and the front doors were still locked.

So we just spent some time playing with the local kids.

A few minutes later the pastor pulled up and opened the main doors.



This is the inside of the church.

It was another half an hour though until the service officially began. It seemed like it was an extremely small congregation, but by 7:30 the place was full. So a 6:00 service really starts well after 7:00 (or when the pastor and the people get there and decide to get it going). The worship was great, and it gave us a chance to meet the people we will be working with this week.

There are several main areas of Belize City. We are staying in the downtown area, but will be working in the "burial grounds." It's called that literally because that's where the burial grounds are as you can see from this picture. If you look closely at the upper left hand corner of the picture, you can see the steeple of the church where we worshipped tonight.

Here are just a few pictures of the streets of the burial grounds, the various houses, and the people who live there.

Yesterday we wrote about Kenny, a man who works for the Word at Work. We don't have any pictures to post of Kenny yet, but we do have one of his name sake, his youngest child, KJ...

A Few Pictures From Our First Day

We made it safely to Belize just after lunch time, and we had several hours before the rest of our group (the 30 or so people from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lubbock) arrived in Belize. After a delicious lunch of cow foot soup and "boil-up" we spent a few hours exploring Belize City. The group from Lubbock arrived just in time for dinner and fellowship. There are many of the Lubbock team members who have been coming to Belize every year for 3, 4, or even 5 years, and we loved listening to their stories over dinner!



A few pictures from our first day...


This is our team in the DFW airport pre-flight. A BIG thank-you to Suzie and Joan for waking up extremely early (before the sun was even up) to take us to the airport.

These are some of the first few things we saw as we flew into Belize,

A welcome sign,

a hotel that reminded us that God was already at work in Belize well before our plane touched down,

and busy city streets.

We had a wonderful "tour guide" (one of the men who works for the Word at Work) named Kenny who drove us around the city, giving us a history lesson on the way to our hotel. He will also be our construction foreman this week.

This is St. Andrews Presbyterian Church - which the Word at Work (the organization that we are working with here in Belize) helped found. And in turn, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church started Unity Presbyterian Church where we will be worshipping tomorrow (and where we will be working near all week).

We stopped by the lighthouse to take a group picture (this is the one day all week we will be in matching t-shirts).

It's going to be a great week - THANK YOU for your prayers!